Yuki Tsunoda talks about feeling more relaxed and not stressed out in his second F1 season after learning to control.
It wasn’t an easy debut F1 season for Tsunoda as Red Bull and AlphaTauri had to make special provision and programme for the Japanese driver to attain fitness levels and improve his performance. It was like too much thrown at him all at once.
Tsunoda was singled out for his desperate radio calls which seemed a bit too much with the language used. Since he wasn’t getting the results he wanted, it only added to his frustration. He was eventually retained by AlphaTauri for another year in 2022.
While he improved on his results but with AlphaTauri being on the overweight side, it pulled them down where even Pierre Gasly struggled a bit. Personally, Tsunoda felt pretty good not just on physical side but also mentally where he was less stressed.
“For me, I think I would say in general: physical side; mentality side and driving side,” said Tsunoda. “I think overall, I’m pretty happy, especially I’ll say, now I’m feeling relaxed in the race week, especially Thursday, Friday, which I didn’t know how to approach and I was stressing consistently, especially last year, rushing everything.
“That makes a little bit to stress and can be frustrating, and made it a little bit difficult by myself. But now I can kind of be relaxing and I know how to adapt to any situation. So, feeling confidence, good confidence and anything that happens, like the things I didn’t expect, still, I know how to handle it.
“So yeah, I think overall, this year, I’m pretty happy about the how I progressed, every race. And yeah, I think hopefully I can continue or even more, this momentum. And also next year as well,” summed up Tusnoda, who noted that he will be staying mostly in Europe this time and only visit Japan for a brief period.
He did take part in Honda Thanks Day and likely stayed back. He joked about getting fat if he stayed longer. “I’m planning for a little bit more in Europe,” said Tsunoda. “And I’ll go back to Japan, but I think it’ll be as short as it was probably last year and then come back to Europe and train as last year or this year’s beginning of the season. So I’m not planning on spending too long there. Or else I am going to be really fat.”
Here’s Yuki Tsunoda at Honda Thanks Day